My young friend Coleman Hughes has a new book out, The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America. John and I both think it’s well worth reading, but we’re a little divided on how much we can depend on “colorblindness” to solve our problems. I’ve often advocated for transracial humanism as an alternative to race consciousness. But I worry that too narrow a focus on the end goal of a colorblind society risks ignoring contradictions within a raced society that must be dealt with before we can move on. In this clip from our most recent episode, John and I debate Coleman’s take on colorblindness.
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A colorblind society is inevitable. All we have to do is get out of the way.
It won't happen overnight; it may take several more generations (probably more than any of us might hope) ...but it is inevitable. And it is inevitable because skin color is, ultimately, so genetically malleable and so utterly trivial. As trivial, in fact, as shoe size, height, freckles, hair color, and nose shape. Weight, actually, is less amenable to indifference than skin color. As any of the obese might testify, it's far easier to be accepted as an averaged-sized black man or woman than someone who tips the scales at 400 lbs. Far easier to be accepted when our skin color is 'diverse' than to be someone who is significantly ugly/unsightly or repulsive.
For better or worse, the institutional support for the fat & ugly is severely lacking; their media presence, unsurprisingly, is minimal. No crowds are chanting, "Ugly Fat Lives Matter".
Glenn references substantive blindness...he agrees than on an individual level, colorblindness is the ideal...that color should have nothing to do with admissions, qualifications, hurdle rates, or recognitions (and he's absolutely right)...but still he struggles with the notion that such colorblindness might lead us to a general population-wide unawareness, or an indifference to substantive differences in demographic color balance when it comes to things like incarceration rates, or poverty rates, etc.
But the truth is, it's all individual. Politics, as they say, is personal. We don't rise or fall as group reps; we do so individually. If we push to become colorblind for the person, then we must be equally colorblind for the people. There is no other way.
Does that mean we must then blind ourselves to demographics? Does that mean we ignore or lose track of population counts (be they prison tallies, med school totals, high school graduation rates, criminal conviction rates, out of wedlock births, whatever? No, of course not. We'll probably never stop counting this stuff or sending troops of academicians to study the differences so revealed.
But when we can say, with surety, that as a society -- at an individual level -- we are essentially colorblind. When we know that there is no baked-in institutional or organizational bias driving firing, promotion, salary, or admission decisions because of skin color ....and that all such individual outcome choices are made on the basis of merit (as best we can identify it).... then we equally know that demographic imbalances in group outcomes can only be due to equivalent demographic imbalances in the group's behavior, as evidenced at an individual level...and those behavioral choices are rooted in culture.
I recently read an article about Business Strategy, and the author made the point (as emphasized by Satya Nadella (of Microsoft fame)) that "culture eats strategy for breakfast". He's absolutely right. We might equally equally paraphrase Breitbart and say, not just politics, but demographic outcomes are themselves also downstream from Culture. Of course they are.
We behave the way we behave because the social constructs, the parental influences, the peer pressures which surround us tell us to behave in exactly that fashion. And, at least short-term, we are consistently rewarded for our broadly demonstrated cultural behaviors by acceptance within the culture which preaches it.
Glenn himself tells us this in his brilliant analysis, "Why Does Racial Inequality Persist": "The 21st-century failures of too many African-Americans to take advantage of the opportunities created by the civil rights revolution are palpable, yet they are denied at every turn. This position is untenable. The end of Jim Crow segregation and the advent of equal rights for blacks were game changers. A half-century later, the deep disparities that remain are shameful and are due in large part to the behaviors of black people."
And how do we trace the antecedents for that behavior? What is its source? Where is this counter-productive, self-destructive, anti-social behavior demonstrated & imitated, over and over again? As ugly and unpalatable as the answer may be, it remains: Black Culture as created & reinforced within the Black Community.
Sadly it is a set of cultural influences which are now not just tolerated but actively reinforced by the broader media, the law, and national institutional practice as we normalize low expectations by reducing performance standards. Behaviors must have consequences, good & bad...and if we want bad behaviors to change they can't be protected by the elimination of the consequence that should logically follow
And this stopping....this consequence giving... begins by embracing colorblindness.
I've heard references to "black culture." By contrast, what is "white culture"? I am skeptical that a separate culture exists for any racial group. But it depends on the definition of culture.